CHAP. LXIV.] He struggles to avoid the decisive measure. LINCOLN'S RELUCTANCE TO ACT. 599 might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed that ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had tried to preserve the Constitution, if to save slavery or any minor matter I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution altogether. When, early in the war, General Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the Border States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either sur rendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying a strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss, but of this I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force-no loss by it anyhow or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have the men, and we could not have had them without the measure. "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess He can not resist the force of events, either party can claim it. plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years of strug gling, the nation's condition is not what or any man devised or expected. God alone Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills, also, that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new causes to attest and revere HIS justice and mercy." and perceives that a higher power is compelling him. Contradictory army slaves. The army orders and instructions in relation to slaves show in a very interesting manner how imorders in relation to perfectly the true method of dealing with the Confederacy was understood by the na tional leaders. McClellan would put the slaves down แ with an iron hand." Cameron would not surrender any coming within the army lines. Patterson would repress all servile insurrection. Mansfield would harbor none in his camps. Butler looked upon them as contraband. Fremont proclaimed them free in his department. Dix would not interfere between the slave and his master. Wool would give the slaves employment, and regulate their pay and allowances. Halleck would drive them out of his lines; he prohibited the stealing and concealment of them by his soldiers. Burnside declared that he would not interfere with slavery. Subserviency to the slave interest may be considered as having reached its shameful climax in the American army when Buell and Hooker actually authorized slaveholders to search the national camps for fugitives and carry them away. The major commanding one of the regiments under the latter general reported that so great was the visible dissatisfac tion and murmuring among the soldiers that he almost feared for the safety of the slaveholders. He added that CHAP. LXIV.] COLONIZATION AND COMPENSATION. 601 "when they were within one hundred yards of our camp, one of their number discharged two pistol-shots at a negro who was running past them, with the evident intention of taking his life. This greatly enraged our men." This surrendering of negroes was positively forbidden by Doubleday, who ordered them to be treated, not as chattels, but as persons. Hunter, in his department, proclaimed them all free, and the President, in another proclamation, rescinded that of Hunter. In his first annual message (December 3d, 1861) LinLincoln proposes coln proposed colonization, in some terri colonization, tory outside of the republic, of those negroes who through the operations of the war might be come free. He even suggested that it might be well to consider whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals might desire, be included in such colonization. The measure, however, met with no very emphatic approval in Congress. One hundred thousand dollars were appropriated to aid in the colonization of the free blacks of the District of Columbia. A few were taken to Cow Island, on the coast of Hayti, but the scheme speedily proved a failure. Total failure of that plan. In the following spring (March 6th, 1862), in a special message to the houses of Congress, Lincoln suggested that they should adopt the following joint resolution: He proposes com "Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavpensated emanci- ery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used pation. by such state, in its discretion, to compensate for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by such change of sys tem." "If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet the approval of Congress and the country, there is an end of it; but if it does command such approval, I deem it of importance that the states and people immediately interested should be at once distinctly notified of the fact, so that they may begin to consider whether to accept or reject it. The federal government would find its highest interest in such a measure, as one of the most efficient means of self-preservation. The leaders of the existing insurrection entertain the hope that this govern ment will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region, and that all the Slave States north of such part will then say, 'The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section.' To deprive them of this hope substantially ends the rebellion, and the initiation of emancipation has that effect. . . . While it is true that the adoption of the proposed resolution would be merely initiatory, and not within itself a practical measure, it is recommended in the hope that it would soon lead to important practical results." Congressional re In the discussion which ensued in the House, it was apparent that the representatives of the Border States, and the Democratic members generally, were determined to resist emancipation, whether compensated sistance to it. or not. One declared that his people were not prepared to enter upon the proposed work of purchasing the slaves of other people, and turning them loose in their midst; another demanded what clause of the Constitution gives power to Congress to appropriate the treasure of the United States to buy negroes and set them free; another did not understand that the House must follow the beck of the President. It had its duties to discharge as well as he. Notwithstanding this opposition, the joint resolution The joint resolution passed both houses, and was approved by inoperative. the President (April 10th, 1862). It re CHAP. LXIV.] HUNTER'S PROCLAMATION. 603 mained, however, practically a dead letter-no Slave State ever claimed its benefits. The President's tion to Hunter. It was shortly after this that Lincoln felt himself constrained to issue a proclamation indicating his relations to slavery at the time (May 19th, 1862). Major General Hunter, in command at Hilton Head, South counter-proclama- Carolina, had, as is mentioned (p. 601), issued an order (May 9th, 1862) declaring the states Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina to be under martial law; and that, since slavery and martial law are incompatible in a free country, all persons held as slaves in those states he declares to be henceforth and forever free. President Lincoln, in his proclamation, recites the order of General Hunter, and continues: "And whereas the same is producing some excitement and misunderstanding; therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, proclaim and declare that the government of the United States had no knowledge or belief of an intention on the part of General Hunter to issue such a proclamation, nor has it yet any authentic information that the document is genuine, and, farther, that neither General Hunter nor any other commander or person has been authorized by the government of the United States to make proclamation declaring the slaves of any state free; and that the supposed proclamation now in question, whether genuine or false, is altogether void, so far as respects such declaration. I farther make known that, whether it be competent for me, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any state or states free, and whether, at any time or in any case, it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I re He reserves emancipation to him self. |